The subject of my last two columns, Mai’s perfect fried rice, is still on my mind. The dish is memorable because Mai knows exactly what kind of rice gets spectacular results. She uses the California-grown Calrose, which has a soft, sticky, tender texture that works perfectly in this recipe. It’s so delicious you might eat several helpings.
For fun, I did a quick study of fried rice recipes. I reviewed many, including about ten on the fancy New York Times Cooking website. Not one recipe, even those written by well-known food writers, mentioned what type of rice works best. This puzzles me. Imagine reading a recipe for pepperoni pizza which simply calls for cheese. A person might think it’s okay to use blue cheese or cottage cheese. Yuck! This made me wonder: how often is the specific ingredient that defines a dish completely overlooked?
I thought about all the dishes around the world, those iconic expressions of geography and culture, which call for specific kinds of rice. Paella in Spain, an elaborate dish of seafood, rabbit, and vegetables, relies on short-grain Bomba rice for its ability to soak up broth while holding its shape. Risotto in Italy depends on Arborio or Carnaroli to release starch as it’s stirred into a creamy texture. Biryani in India calls for basmati, with its long, aromatic grains, and sushi simply would not work without short-grain, sticky Japonica rice. Cooks in Louisiana consider it mandatory to use long-grain rice in traditional jambalaya and dirty rice. Change the rice, and you don’t just tweak the recipe, you change the dish itself. Since each variety behaves differently, the choice of rice isn’t incidental; it’s foundational.
I kept thinking about Mai and her one-word recommendation: Calrose. The other fried rice recipes I read gave plenty of guidance about technique, heating the oil, timing the ingredients, even the size of the pan, but they skipped right over the rice, as if any old rice would do. Calrose works so well for fried rice because it hits the sweet spot between sticky and dry. One small detail can make all the difference.
When I grew up, there were two kinds of rice in our kitchen: Uncle Ben’s converted white rice in a box, the ho-hum kind thrown at weddings. I never thought to question what “converted” meant. Since my mother was an early adopter of the health food movement, we also kept brown rice in the refrigerator. Now, thanks to globalization, a walk down the grocery store aisle is like taking a trip around the world. Maybe that’s the real lesson of Mai’s fried rice: stop thinking of rice as just rice.